


surfacing

by museaway



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Coda, M/M, POV Will, Post-Finale, Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-01
Updated: 2015-09-01
Packaged: 2018-04-18 09:54:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4701746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/museaway/pseuds/museaway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The last thing Will remembered thinking before they hit the water was the adage, <em>It’s not the fall that kills you</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	surfacing

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn’t going to write this, but I couldn’t get it out of my head, so please indulge me.

The last thing Will remembered thinking before they hit the water was the adage,  _It’s not the fall that kills you_.

The ocean forced them apart, a wall of water smashing them against a wall of rock. The surf was cold and unforgiving: literal salt in his wounds. He repeatedly swiped his hand through the surge in search of Hannibal’s, but came up empty. He sputtered, gasping for air through a mouthful of saltwater.

Something brushed his leg—an arm? A hand? He thrashed in the water and the thing bobbed up beside him.

“Hannibal,” he rasped, shocked by his appearance: ashen skin and lips deep gray in the moonlight. The blood had washed away.

Hannibal’s blink was sluggish, but he opened his eyes. They grabbed each other, almost drowning from the tangle of limbs. Hannibal’s arms locked around Will’s neck, forcing his mouth and nose underwater. But it was the survival instinct that drove Hannibal to do it. Will held his breath until he could surface. The ocean beat and beat and beat against them.

He was woozy and disoriented because of his blood loss, both of them in danger of hypothermia, but adrenaline forced his hands onto the rock the next time the ocean pushed them toward it; gave him the resolve to try and guide them, ever so slowly, along the base of the cliff toward the shore.

There had to be a shore.

For seemingly hours, he pulled them inch by inch, hand over hand, along the cliffside. Hannibal shivered against him, panting into his neck. Will guided them despite his exhaustion, despite the blisters and lacerations that formed on his palms and fingertips from the slippery rock. His hands throbbed and bled, and he kept moving.

He saw black and stars, Molly and Willy and the dogs, his farm house in Wolf Trap. He ground his teeth and forced them through the dark waves, surprised the stag didn’t tread water beside them.

At last, the shore—a mirage, he thought at first; a trick of the light—but he crawled up the sandy incline on one arm, as weak and desperate as the first fish emerging from the ocean. He heaved Hannibal with him, exhausting the last of his strength, collapsing on the sand and closing his eyes. Hannibal didn’t move, a heavy, wet weight on top of him. Every part of Will’s body ached, but he couldn’t get up. The waves rushed up around them, then retreated.

Maybe it would have been better to bleed out on the clifftop. If they managed to survive, how long would Hannibal let him live for this newest betrayal? It had been a coward’s way out. It had been  _his_  way out. Bedelia was right: he couldn’t live, with or without him.

 _It’s not the fall_ , he told himself as Hannibal shook above him and went still, and the waves, ever moving, came again.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> [fic post on tumblr](http://www.museaway.com/post/128069416890/i-wasnt-going-to-write-this-but-i-couldnt-get)


End file.
